A new tagalong class action seeks to hold T-Mobile accountable for the massive data breach it disclosed in a Jan. 19 SEC filing (see 2301230046). But the complaint, filed Wednesday (docket 3:23-cv-00427) in U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego, is unique among the others for the voluminous number of plaintiffs it names -- 46. We believe it to be the 16th class action filed since T-Mobile disclosed that bad actors accessed the personally identifiable information (PII) of 37 million current prepaid and postpaid account holders (see 2303080003).
Plaintiff Marcus Baker provides no case law supporting his “draconian position” that his Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act claims against Match Group should proceed before the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago, rather than in small claims court, as JAMS (formerly Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services) ordered when it closed Baker’s arbitration, said the dating service Tuesday in its reply (docket 1:22-cv-06924) to Baker’s opposition to Match Group’s Jan. 13 motion to dismiss (see 2302150002).
Vox’s lawsuit alleging Gage Technologies conspired with two of its former employees to steal trade secrets should be dismissed because the plaintiff failed to adequately plead trade secret misappropriation or to identify trade secrets with “sufficient particularity,” said defendants' Tuesday motion (docket 3:22-cv-09135) to dismiss in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.
T-Mobile misled its wireless “sub-dealers” when it announced that “hundreds of stores” would be opened after its 2020 Sprint buy, alleged five such sub-dealer plaintiffs in a class action Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-1582) in U.S. District Court for Eastern New York in Brooklyn. T-Mobile instead embarked on a "concealed and undisclosed corporate strategy" to eliminate the sub-dealers nationally, alleged the plaintiffs.
The Republican National Committee’s Oct. 21 complaint against Google (see 2210260080) “is about the market-dominant communications firm unlawfully preventing one of the two major national political parties from communicating its political and fundraising messaging to millions of Americans” through Gmail. So said the RNC’s opposition Monday (docket 2:22-cv-01904) in U.S. District Court for Eastern California in Sacramento to Google’s Jan. 23 motion to dismiss (see 2301240033).
The three dozen plaintiff states seeking to thwart Google’s alleged search monopolies support DOJ’s motion in the consolidated antitrust litigation to sanction Google for destroying evidence, said their own motion Thursday (docket 1:20-cv-03010) in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The states also support convening an evidentiary hearing “to determine the appropriate remedy for the destruction of relevant materials that would have otherwise been discoverable during the governments’ investigations and discovery in this action,” they said. The same misconduct in which DOJ alleges Google has engaged “is equally applicable” to the plaintiff states, “and should be subject to all the same curative measures,” they said. Google owes the states and DOJ “the same duty to preserve its internal chat messages,” they said. “Google’s duty to preserve employee chat messages began at least as early as 2019 when it anticipated litigation” stemming DOJ’s investigation, they said. Google’s practice of deleting chat messages “necessarily inflicted overlapping prejudice” on the states and DOJ, they said. Google’s “misconduct inflicted particularized prejudice” on the plaintiff states because the deleted chats were “likely relevant to the additional anticompetitive conduct alleged” by the states, they said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s statements in an April 14 shareholder letter about the company’s “aggressive expansion efforts” to build out its fulfillment network to meet increasing demand for faster delivery were “materially false and misleading,” alleged shareholder and Pennsylvania resident Jay Smith in a complaint Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-00196). The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for Delaware in Wilmington, named the company and 19 of its executives and/or board members who made statements on earnings calls and congressional testimony or signed SEC financial documents.
T-Mobile seems “incapable of adequately protecting the information it maintains from and about its customers,” said a 17-count class action Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle (docket 2:23-cv-00211). It’s one of about a dozen complaints filed against T-Mobile since its most recent breach announcement Jan. 19.
Plaintiffs Qwest, Level 3 and Global Crossing participated with the eight defendant Peerless Network state affiliates in mediation Feb. 7 in Washington before Morgan Lewis partner Frank Lamancusa, a former DOJ and FCC attorney (see 2301260037), but were “unsuccessful in their efforts to resolve the matter,” said a joint status report Friday (docket 1:21-cv-03004) in U.S. District Court for Colorado on Denver. Though the parties participated in the mediation in good faith, they “do not believe there is a reasonable prospect of settlement any time in the near future,” said the report. The case involves negotiated interconnect agreements and the access tariffs associated with them. Qwest, Level 3 and Global Crossing sued the Peerless affiliates in November 2021, alleging they engaged in a scheme of avoiding mandatory switched access charges, thereby giving them an unfair competitive advantage in the toll-free marketplace (see 2211030043). The defendants countersued in March, alleging the telecom companies used unfair and unsupported billing methods, to the detriment of the Peerless affiliates. As a result of the unsuccessful mediation, the parties now ask the court to refer the complex technical issues in the case to the FCC for the agency’s consideration (see 2210200050) under “the doctrine of primary jurisdiction,” and to stay the litigation, pending the outcome of the referral, it said. The issues for FCC referral: (1) Are toll-free calls always interexchange calls subject to tariffed switched access charges?; (2) Are “responsible organizations” (Resp Orgs) required to populate the SMS/800 database with their own carrier identification code, or the CIC of a carrier they have specifically engaged, or can a Resp Org populate the database with CIC 0110 and route toll-free calls to a regional bell operating company like Qwest for completion over local interconnection trunk groups?; and (3) If a Resp Org routes a toll-free call over a local interconnection trunk group utilizing CIC 0110, is the Resp Org required to pay the regional Bell operating company its tariffed switched access charges depending on the end points of the call?
Telephone Consumer Protection Act defendant State Farm, in arguing discovery should be stayed pending a ruling on its motion to dismiss (see 2302010001), “points to nothing about this case that makes it different than any other case in which a motion to dismiss is pending,” said plaintiff Thomas Gebka’s opposition Tuesday (docket 1:22-cv-05546) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. The class action against State Farm “is even less of a candidate” than normal for a stay, said the opposition. “This district has already denied a nearly-identical motion to dismiss in a separate case where the claims and vicarious liability allegations were virtually identical to those allegations here,” it said. State Farm offers no specifics to support its “boilerplate arguments” that a stay won't prejudice or tactically disadvantage Gebka’s case, said the opposition. Nor could State Farm offer those specifics amid its arguments that involve Gebka’s strategy “that State Farm knows nothing about,” it said: “The request for a stay should therefore be denied.” State Farm’s alternative request for phased discovery to focus on whether a class can be certified “should likewise be denied,” said the opposition. The specific discovery State Farm objects to, and merits discovery generally, “are needed to determine whether common factual and legal issues predominate” in the TCPA case, it said. A stay will “possibly foreclose the putative class members’ claims by needlessly delaying their resolution,” said the opposition. The case involves telemarketing calls made by State Farm’s “subagents,” including third-party vendors hired by State Farm’s agencies or the third-party call centers those vendors used to make the calls, it said. State Farm’s initial discovery disclosures “did not identify the vendors or anyone further downstream,” and State Farm’s agencies objected to providing that information under subpoena, it said. The third parties in question “are most likely to possess or control the indispensable call records,” but they currently have “no duty to preserve evidence,” said the opposition. It compounds the risk of lost evidence that many vendors and call centers “do not keep call records for very long,” it said. That’s especially true after litigation involving the calls begins, “which means the records identifying the class members are likely already being destroyed in the ordinary course,” it said.